CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

March 2012

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #183, 1988, chromogenic color print, 38 x 22¾ in. (artwork © Cindy Sherman; photograph provided by the artist, Metro Pictures, and the Museum of Modern Art)

Cindy Sherman
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
February 26–June 11, 2012

Featuring over 170 photographs, Cindy Sherman—only the fifth career survey by a woman in the Museum of Modern Art’s history—begins with the artist’s groundbreaking series of Untitled Film Stills (1977–80) and continues to her recent Society Portraits that address the unreality of aging in contemporary culture. Soaking up influences far beyond the art world, Sherman has created a body of work that has in turn inspired fashion, film, performance, and music. A film series, Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman, runs from April 2 to 10 and features films personally selected by the artist from the museum’s collection.

Rosemarie Trockel: Flagrant Delight
WIELS
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
February 18–May 27, 2012

Rosemarie Trockel: Flagrant Delight is the first large-scale survey in Belgium of work by this German artist. Trockel often deals with the aesthetic legacies of Surrealism and Dada, and the WIELS show highlights her connection to the Belgian artists René Magritte and Marcel Broodthaers. Flagrant Delight features work produced since the early 1980s and debuts pieces created specifically for the exhibition. The cornerstone of the show is a new series of forty mixed-media collages that trace Trockel’s distinct sensibility through the juxtaposition of recognizable images and abstract motifs.

Kimsooja
Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole
Rue Fernand Léger, 42270 Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, France
February 25–March 28, 2012

Known for large-scale, filmed performances and multichannel videos, the Korean artist Kimsooja makes work that questions global culture and the role of the artist in the world. As the main actor in her videos, often filmed from behind, she engages in repetitive tasks that evoke ritual practice and Zen Buddhist philosophy. In A Needle Woman (1999–2001), comprising eight simultaneously projected videos, Kimsooja stands motionless in the middle of busy city streets—in Madrid, Tokyo, Beijing, Mumbai, Jerusalem, and more—as people walk around, ignore, or interact with her.

R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
March 9–July 15, 2012

R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita surveys the work of the nun, artist, social activist, and influential teacher, Sister Mary Corita (later known as Corita Kent). The exhibition features sixty-five prints created between 1963 and 1967, when Corita taught art at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles; the works combine the eye-catching graphics of pop with the sincere messages of protest signs and buttons that were synonymous with youth culture in the sixties. Highlighting her role as a political activist, R(ad)ical Love foregrounds the agitprop quality of the work and distances it from the commercial art that it may superficially resemble.

Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
January 27–August 12, 2012

Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin pairs the porcelain sculptures of the British artist Rachel Kneebone with fifteen sculptures by the nineteenth-century master Auguste Rodin, chosen by Kneebone from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection. A highlight of the exhibition, Kneebone’s first major museum show in the United States, features The Descent (2008), her work inspired by Dante’s Inferno, presiding over nine large-scale pieces by Rodin. Juxtaposing the emphatic figures of Kneebone and Rodin highlights a shared interest in the “representation of mourning, ecstasy, death, and vitality in figurative sculpture,” while contrasting the differences of their processes and materials.

Postcard for Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond.

Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond
Glass Curtain Gallery
Columbia College Chicago, 1104 South Wabash Avenue, First Floor, Chicago, IL 60605
March 1–April 21, 2012

Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond
Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery
Columbia College Chicago, 619 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605
March 1–April 21, 2012

This two-part exhibition, devoted to the art world’s resident feminist activists, contextualizes the unruly group’s activism and art. The Glass Curtain Gallery features material related to the Guerrilla Girls’ work in museums and galleries, while the A+D Gallery stressess their political activities outside the art world and features a selection of films. Both presentations combine never-before-seen documentation and samples of fan and hate mail, as well as the opportunity for visitors to contribute their own voice through several interactive installations.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Parallel Worlds
Moderna Museet
Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden
February 11–May 6, 2012

This exhibition brings together recent work by the Helsinki-based artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila such as Horizontal (2011), The Annunciation (2010), and Where is Where (2008), with an iconic video from the early 1990s, Me/We, Okay, Gray. Bridging film, video, and installation, the artist’s work is lushly cinematic and strangely subversive, touching on themes of biopolitics and posthumanism. The selection highlights Ahtila’s exploration of human perception, tragedy, and the play between inner and outer worlds.

SHORT BIG DRAMA: Angela Bulloch
Witte de With
Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam, Netherlands
January 21–April 9, 2012

This solo exhibition of the Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist Angela Bulloch collects three separate bodies of work: large-scale wall paintings, pixel installations, and interactive drawing machines. Bulloch’s interdisciplinary and theatrical approach invites viewer participation, and some works can even be “programmed” anew each time they are shown. Bold graphics, vibrant color, and references to the strategies of twentieth-century avant-garde movements—Constructivism, Minimalism, and the Situationists’ use of détournement—call into question the “informational status” of a given artwork.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Witte de With will host a book launch on April 3 for Source Book 10: Angela Bulloch, a monographic collection of critical essays and collaborations with other artists.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

February 2012

Alina Szapocznikow, Petit Dessert I (Small Dessert I), 1970–71, colored polyester resin and glass, 3 3/16 x 4 5/16 x 5⅛ in. Kravis Collection (artwork © Estate of Alina Szapocznikow/Piotr Stanislawski/ADAGP, Paris; photograph by Thomas Mueller and provided by Broadway 1602, New York, and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne)

Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972
Hammer Museum
University of California, Los Angeles, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
February 5–April 29, 2012
Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972 is the inaugural United States museum survey for this underrepresented Polish artist. A Holocaust survivor who died in 1973 at the age of forty-seven, Szapocznikow is widely acknowledged by her artist peers as one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century. She pioneered the use of unconventional sculptural materials, such as polyester and polyurethane, and constructed a visual language that addressed the body’s pain and regeneration. The exhibition includes approximately sixty sculptures, fifty works on paper, and numerous photographic works, demonstrating the tremendous range of Szapocznikow’s vision and continuing influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists.

Maya Lin
Heinz Architectural Center
Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
February 11–May 13, 2012
An exhibition of work by Maya Lin explores her diverse career as architect, artist, and dedicated environmentalist. The twenty-one sculptures and drawings on view range from room-sized installations evocative of geological topography to intricately designed wall installations. Lin has made one new work inspired by Pittsburgh’s three rivers, Pin River – Ohio (Allegheny & Monongahela), specifically for the Carnegie Museum, and her new memorial video project, What is Missing?, will be screened in the museum’s Scaife Lobby.

Shares and Stakeholders: The Feminist Art Project Day of Panels
Abramson Auditorium
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 250 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
February 25, 2012
This year’s Feminist Art Project Day of Panels, organized by the artists Audrey Chan and Elana Mann and held in conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference, asks the question: What are the stakes—and who are the stakeholders—of the feminist future? The conversations will address the greater inclusivity of a contemporary feminist art that embraces a multiplicity of identities and philosophies. Topics of discussion will include: feminist art educational models, the roles of men in feminist art, interventionist art strategies, radical queer art making, and feminism as a daily humanist practice. This event is free and open to the public.

Katharine Pyle, “He knocked against a tin pan that clattered down with a tremendous din,” from Three Little Kittens by Katharine Pyle (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), 1920, graphite, ink, and gouache on illustration board, 7⅞ x 6⅜ in. Lent by David and Sarah Wyeth (photograph provided by the Delaware Art Museum)

Tales of Folk and Fairies: The Life and Work of Katharine Pyle
Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmare Parkway, Wilmington, DE 19806
February 18–September 9, 2012
This exhibition presents seventy-one works by the celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Katharine Pyle (1863–1938). A native of Wilmington, Katherine Pyle was encouraged from a young age to pursue poetry and illustration by her older brother, the famed illustrator Howard Pyle. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and at the Drexel Institute of Art and Science, also in Philadelphia. Her work was stylistically aligned with her brother, and also with Beatrix Potter, Walter Crane, and Aubrey Beardsley. Pyle’s subjects were taken from Norse and Greek mythology, fairy tales, and animal stories, and her 1923 illustrations for Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty are among her best-known work.

A Complex Weave: Women and Identity in Contemporary Art
Perlman Teaching Museum
Weitz Center for Creativity, Carleton College, 320 Third Street East, Northfield, MN 55057
January 13–March 11, 2012
This exhibition, curated by Martin Rosenberg and J. Susan Isaacs, looks at the current state of feminist art practices and the range of materials and theories used by contemporary artists. Personal and political identity is explored in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and needlework. The roster of artists include: Blanka Amezkua, Sarah Amos, Helene Aylon, Siona Benjamin, Zoe Charlton, Sonya Clark, Annet Couwenberg, Lalla A. Essaydi, Judy Gelles, Sharon Harper, Julie Harris, Fujiko Isomura, Tatiana Parcero, Philemona Williamson, April Wood, and Flo Oy Wong.

Kathryn Spence, Short sharp notes, a long whistled trill on one pitch, clear phrases (detail), 2010–11 (artwork © Kathryn Spence; photograph by Rick Schwab and provided by Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco)

Kathryn Spence: Dirty and Clean
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877
January 29, 2011–June 10, 2012
The German-born, San Francisco-based artist Kathryn Spence uses found, dirty, and discarded materials to explore the complexities of humanity’s relationship to garbage and its place in our ecosystem. Spence, an avid bird-watcher and nature enthusiast, creates life-sized animal models from scraps of paper, fabric, string, and wire. Her work plays with the idea of dirt and dirtiness as both a purifying source and as a by-product of human waste and greed.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

January 2012

Jenny Saville, Bleach, 2008, oil on canvas, 99 5/16 x 73 11/16 in. Collection of Lisa and Steven Tananbaum (artwork © Jenny Saville)

Jenny Saville
Norton Museum of Art
1451 South Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
November 30, 2011–March 4, 2012

Jenny Saville is the inaugural exhibition of the Norton Museum of Art’s Recognition of Art by Women (RAW) series, and the first solo American museum exhibition of the British figurative artist. This exhibition will bring together her most recognizable monumental figure and portrait paintings along with drawings from her recent series Reproduction drawing (based on the Leonardo cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist from the National Gallery, London) depicting mother and child images. The presentation will include twenty-eight canvases and drawings dating from 1992 to 2011 and smaller studies, not previously shown, from the artist’s studio.

In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
January 29–May 6, 2012

The Surrealist movement in art is most often identified with male artists, many of whom objectified women in their paintings. Numerous female artists at the time, however, developed their own identity-based imagery. This exhibition looks at female Surrealists working in the United States and Mexico and contains 175 works in a variety of media that were created between 1931 and 1968 by artists such as Lee Miller, Yayoi Kusama, and Frida Kahlo.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels: Sunset, 1976, Great Basin Desert, Utah, 1976, detail of composite of four photographs reproduced from original 35mm transparencies, (artwork © Nancy Holt)

Nancy Holt: Sightlines
Tufts University Art Gallery
Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University, 40 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
January 19–April 1, 2012

Since the late 1960s, Nancy Holt has created a far-reaching body of work, including Land Art, films, videos, site-specific installations, artist’s books, concrete poetry and major sculpture commissions. Nancy Holt: Sightlines showcases the artist’s transformation from the perception of the landscape through the use of different observational modes in her early films, videos, and related works from 1966–80.

Cathy Wilkes
Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
November 12, 2011–February 26, 2012

Carnegie Museum of Art presents the first solo American museum exhibition to combine the painting and sculptural installations of the Irish artist Cathy Wilkes. Often examining personal experiences, including motherhood, Wilkes is best known for vulnerable, haunting sculptures and installations in which sculpted and found objects are altered and arranged into humanistic—if sometimes disturbing—domestic scenes. Including nine paintings, a recent sculpture, and a newly commissioned installation, this exhibition provides a comprehensive view of Wilkes’s practice.

Margaret Murphy, Reclining Woman (after Kurosawa), 2007, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 20 x 14 in. (artwork © Margaret Murphy)

Margaret Murphy, A Ten-Year Survey; Decoding the Marketplace: coupons, dollar stores, and eBay
Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery
New Jersey City University, Hepburn Hall, Room 323, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305
January 30–March 7, 2012

This exhibition highlights varied bodies of work created during the last decade by the artist Margaret Murphy. Included in the exhibition are the Tarot Cards series (1997–2000), the Sweet 16 series (2005–7), and the Parlor Paintings (2006–7). Seen together for the first time, these paintings and collages demonstrate Murphy’s insightful feminist critique of the American consumer culture and misrepresentation of women as seen through commodity objects such as porcelain figurines and product packaging.

Andrea Fraser, Men on the Line, KPFK
National Center for the Preservation of Democracy
111 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
January 23, 2012

Vaginal Davis, My Pussy is Still in Los Angeles (I Only Live in Berlin)
Bullock Department Store Wilshire
3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Fifth Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90010
January 29, 2012

In late January, West of Rome Public Art will host performances by two legendary and controversial feminist artists as part of Pacific Standard Time’s Performance and Public Art Festival. Both works are part of a series inspired by the Los Angeles–based Woman’s Building (1973–81), whose history and influence is currently explored in the PST exhibition Doin’ It in Public.

Zoe Strauss, South Philly (Mattress Flip Front), 2001/2003 (negative/print), chromogenic print, image: 6⅞ x 10⅛ in./sheet: 8 x 10⅜ in. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with funds contributed by Theodore T. Newbold and Helen Cunningham, 2003 (artwork © Zoe Strauss)

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
January 14–April 22, 2012

This midcareer survey of the work of Zoe Strauss, a resident of south Philadelphia, focuses on her decade-long public art project in which each year on the first Sunday in May she exhibited more than two hundred of her photographs in a space beneath a section of Interstate 95 in south Philadelphia. Most of her subjects are disenfranchised people or places.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

December 2011

Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering Johnston, Henriette Charlotte Chastaigner (Mrs. Nathaniel Broughton), 1711, pastel on paper; 14 2/5 x 11 3/5 in. Gibbes Museum of Art, Gift of Victor A. Morawetz (artwork in the public domain)

Breaking Down Barriers: 300 Years of Women in Art
Gibbes Museum of Art
135 Meeting Street, Charlestown, SC 29401
October 28, 2011–January 8, 2012

This exhibition, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, examines the challenges that women artists have faced over the past three hundred years. The oldest works are by Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering Johnston (ca. 1674–1729), who is considered the first female professional artist in America. Among the most recent contributions are those by artists who work in Charleston today.

Nan Goldin: Scopophilia
Matthew Marks Gallery
522 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
October 29–December 23, 2011

Scopophilia (“the love of looking”) combines Nan Goldin’s autobiographical photographs with those taken in the Louvre Museum after hours. A video, complete with the artist’s commentary and soaring choral music, is shown in a darkened viewing room. Both the photographs and video deal with themes of love and desire.

Sarah Sze: Infinite Line
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
December 16, 2011–March 25, 2012

Sarah Sze: Infinite Line comprises two-dimensional works on paper and a new large-scale, site-specific installation. Sze uses everyday objects such as milk cartons, takeout cups, bars of soap, feathers, lamps, ladders, pebbles, potted plants, pens, plastic bottles, tools, and twigs, which are transformed in her installations by their associations.

Sanja Iverković: Sweet Violence
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
December 18, 2011–March 25, 2012

This first US museum exhibition of the Croatian feminist, activist, and video and performance artist Sanja Iverković covers four decades of her career. Roxana Marcoci, curator in the Department of Photography, has brought together a group of videos and media installations, including Sweet Violence (1974), Personal Cuts (1982), Practice Makes a Master (1982/2009), General Alert (Soap Opera) (1995), and Rohrbach Living Memorial (2005), along with one hundred photomontages.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

November 2011

Patti Smith, Walt Whitman’s Tomb, Camden, NJ, 2007, unique Polaroid, 4¼ x 3¼ in. (artwork © Patti Smith; photograph provided by the artist, Robert Miller Gallery, and the Wadsworth Atheneum)

Patti Smith: Camera Solo
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103
October 21, 2011–February 19, 2012

With seventy photographs, one multimedia installation, and a video, Patti Smith: Camera Solo is the largest presentation of this artist, poet, and performer’s visual work in the United States in nearly ten years. The exhibition highlights the connection between Smith’s photography and her interest in poetry and literature. Actual objects that appear in the many black-and-white Polaroids will also be on view.

Patti Smith: 9.11 Babelogue
Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery
Hunter College, City University of New York, East 68th Street at Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10065
September 8–December 3, 2011

Mounted in conjunction with the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center, Patti Smith: 9.11 Babelogue comprises twenty-six works on paper created between 2001 and 2002 as a response to the tragic event in New York. Organized by Michelle Yun, curator of the Hunter College Art Galleries, the exhibition is the first presentation of the entire series.

Second Annual Feminist Art History Conference
Katzen Arts Center
American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20016
November 4–6, 2011

Following the success of last year’s inaugural event, the Art History Program in the Department of Art at American University has organized the second annual Feminist Art History Conference. Speakers in twelve sessions will deliver fifty-one papers that span a broad range of topics and time periods, from the medieval era to contemporary art. The presentations will also demonstrate the ways in which feminist research and interpretation have spread across the spectrum of art-historical analysis and scholarship. In her keynote address, Mary D. Sheriff, a distinguished professor of art history at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who specializes in eighteenth and nineteenth-century French art and culture, will speak on “The Future of Feminist Art History: Where Have We Come From, Where Are We Going?” The conference is free and open to the public; online registration (by October 28) is recommended.

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, New York, 1979–80, chromogenic print, 3⅜ x 3½ in. (photograph © George and Betty Woodman)

Francesca Woodman
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
November 5, 2011–February 20, 2012

This survey of works by the photographer Francesca Woodman, known for her black-and-white self-portraits from the late 1970s, is the first in more than two decades and comes thirty years after her death at age twenty-two. Organized by Corey Keller, associate curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition includes prints, artist’s books, and videos.

Sherrie Levine: Mayhem
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10021
November 10, 2011–January 29, 2012

Sherrie Levine has been the subject of much critical discourse for the past thirty years. This exhibition, developed as a project by the artist, includes works ranging from her well-known 1981 photograph, After Walker Evans: 1-22, to recently created objects, such as Crystal Skull: 1-12, from 2010. Levine and the curators—Johanna Burton, Elisabeth Sussman, and Carrie Springer—will juxtapose old and new works in order to provoke fresh associations and responses.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

October 2011

Wendy Stayman, Chairs, 2007, Swiss pear, macassor ebony, bent laminated plywood, and chrome-tanned calfskin (photograph by David Stansbury and provided by the artist and the Fuller Craft Museum)

Furniture Divas: Recent Work by Contemporary Makers
Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street, Brockton, MA 02301
February 19–October 30, 2011

This exhibition celebrates the contributions of fifteen women—Vivian Beer, Polly Cassel, Gail Fredell, Jenna Goldberg, Barbara Holmes, Kristina Madsen, Sarah Martin, Wendy Maruyama, Judy Kensley McKie, Alison McLennan, Sylvie Rosenthal, Rosanne Somerson, Wendy Stayman, Leah Woods, and Yoko Zeltserman-Miyaji—to studio furniture and provides a snapshot of contemporary developments in the field.

Call and Response: From Artemisia to Frida
Koehnline Museum of Art
Oakton Community College, 1600 East Golf Road, Des Plaines, IL 60016
October 6–28, 2011

This annual juried exhibition of works by artists who identify themselves as women is sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program of Oakton Community College and the Koehnline Museum of Art. The artists in Call and Response have created works that honor, critique, or expand on the techniques and/or content of a groundbreaking female artist.

Charline von Heyl
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania, 118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
September 7, 2011–February 19, 2012

This exhibition is a survey of a decade of productivity by Charline von Heyl, a German-born, New York–based painter of vibrant, enigmatic works. Organized by Jenelle Porter, senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the presentation includes collage-based works on paper and eighteen paintings.

Real Time
Douglass Library Galleries
Rutgers University, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
September 1–December 9, 2011

The Brainstormers art collective was formed in 2005 by a group of women who chose to use public performance, exhibitions, publications, the internet, and video as a means of forcing a discussion about gender inequities in the contemporary New York art world. For Real Time, the group invited artists from across the country to anonymously share intimate details of their daily lives through whatever format they preferred.

Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Stein, 1935, gelatin-silver print. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s. CM3794 (photograph provided by the Contemporary Jewish Museum)

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Eighth and F Streets NW, Washington, DC 20001
October 14, 2011–January 22, 2012

With more than fifty artifacts from Gertrude Stein’s life and one hundred works by artists from Europe and the United States, the exhibition focuses on her life and work as an artist, collector, and style maker. The exhibition was previously mounted at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California, and was a CWA Pick in July–August 2011.

Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels
Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577
September 25–December 18, 2011

As the recipient of the 2011 Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize, the Brooklyn-based artist Dana Schutz was awarded an early career survey and monographic catalogue at the Neuberger Museum of Art. The show includes thirty paintings and twelve drawings created since 2001.

Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building
Ben Maltz Gallery
Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
October 1, 2011–January 28, 2012

As part of the sweeping Pacific Standard Time, a series of exhibitions and events that surveys the history of art in southern California since the end of World War II, Doin’ It in Public focuses on the contributions of feminist artists who came from the women’s liberation movement to found the Woman’s Building, which in the 1970s and 1980s was the center of feminist art and activism in southern California. Otis College of Art and Design is also sponsoring a symposium, “Still Doin’ It: Fanning the Flames of the Woman’s Building,” on October 15–16, which will bring together participants from the Woman’s Building and emerging feminists to instigate dialogue concerning its history and influence.

A Different Temporality: Aspects of Feminist Art Practice in Australia, 1975–1985
Monash University Museum of Art
Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Building F, Ground Floor, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
October 13–December 17, 2011

This exhibition, curated by Kyra McFarlane, revisits the recent history of Australian feminism to focus on dominant modes of creative practice among a generation of feminist artists. Presented in association with the Melbourne Festival, A Different Temporality is organized around the principle of feminist “forms and ideas which continue to resonate in the present.”

Harmony Hammond: Against Seamlessness
Dwight Hackett Projects
2879 All Trades Road, Santa Fe, NM 87507
October 15–November 26, 2011

The legendary artist Harmony Hammond shows her latest work, a series of monumental abstract paintings that explore in new ways what many consider her signature, sculptural sensuality. An accompanying catalogue with essays by Tirza True Latimer and Julia Bryan-Wilson addresses the artist’s relationship with Minimalism, abstraction, feminism, craft, and process.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

September 2011

Tracey Snelling, “Woman on the Run,” 2008–11, mixed media, dimensions variable (artwork © Tracey Snelling; photograph by Etienne Frossard)

Tracey Snelling’s “Woman on the Run”
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203-3822
September 9, 2011–February 5, 2012

Describing her work, the American artist Tracey Snelling has said that she creates new realities that change with her audience’s perception. She gives her impression of a place, its people and their experience, and allows the viewer to extrapolate his or her own meaning. “Woman on the Run,” an installation previously mounted at 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, combines video, photography, and sculpture to tell the story of a mysterious woman sought for questioning in a murder.

“2011 Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women”
Purdue University
155 South Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2114
September 22–23, 2011

This second annual meeting on issues facing pretenure women in academia features plenary speeches by Sara Laschever, a researcher on women’s life and career obstacles; Mary Dankoski, a dean, administrator, and professor of family medicine at Purdue University; and Caroline S. Turner, a professor at California State University, Sacramento, and Arizona State University. Sessions include “Promotion and Tenure Document Review,” “Your Plan to Tenure,” and “From Graduate Student to Faculty Member.”

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, ca. 1613–14, oil on canvas, 162½ x 100 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (artwork in the public domain)

Artemisia Gentileschi: Story of a Passion
Palazzo Reale
Piazza Duomo, 12 – 20122 Milan, Italy
September 22, 2011–January 29, 2012

Organized by Roberto Contini, curator of late Italian and Spanish paintings at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Germany, this exhibition is the first solo survey in Italy of works by Artemisia Gentileschi. Story of a Passion comprises the majority of her oeuvre arranged chronologically in an installation designed by Emma Dante, an internationally renowned Italian director and playwright.

Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972
Wiels
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
September 10, 2011–January 8, 2012

Weils, a contemporary art center in Brussels, Belgium, will show the work of the late Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973). For Sculpture Undone: 1955–1972, Elena Filipovic and Joanna Mytkowska has organized a survey of this long-overlooked, Surrealist-inspired artist whose work addressing the female body has become increasingly influential to young feminist artists in the twenty-first century.

Zaha Hadid, WMF Flatware, 2007, stainless steel, dinner fork, 8¾ in.; salad fork, 6⅝ in.; dinner knife, 9⅛ in.; teaspoon, 5⅞ in.; soup spoon, 8⅞ in. Made by Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik AG, Geislingen, Germany (photograph provided by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Zaha Hadid Architects)

Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
September 17, 2011–March 25, 2012

The architect Zaha Hadid has designed buildings, interiors, and furniture. Organized by Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, curator of European decorative arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion is the first presentation in the United States devoted to her furniture, objects, and footwear. The exhibition is also mounted in a setting that she designed.

Thin Black Line(s)
Tate Britain
Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
August 22, 2011–March 18, 2012

This exhibition explores the role of British women artists of African and Asian descent. Inspired by a series of thought-provoking shows curated by the artist Lubaina Himid in the 1980s, Thin Black Line(s) returns to many artists and works seen back then in order to revisit their place in current debates in contemporary art in the United Kingdom in the decades since.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

July–August 2011

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Bangs, 1902, oil on canvas, 24⅛ x 20¼ in. Cone Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art. BMA 1950.268 (artwork © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph provided by the Jewish Museum)

Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
May 6–September 25, 2011

The Cone sisters of Baltimore, Claribel and Etta, were a beacon of taste through their collection of modern art. The Jewish Museum has extracted fifty works from a collection of approximately three thousand that blossomed from purchases of works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse—as early as 1905. After an introduction to the Parisian avant-garde by Gertrude and Leo Stein, the Cone Sisters accrued and displayed modernist treasures alongside an elegant collection of textiles and furniture from Africa, Asia, and Europe. The exhibition will gather these works, photographs, and archival material, allowing the public to ascertain their unrelenting appreciation of art objects.

Dara Birnbaum: Arabesque
Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10019
June 28–August 26, 2011

This summer, Marian Goodman Gallery will exhibit Dara Birnbaum’s new multichannel video piece Arabesque (2011) alongside a miniretrospective of early work such as the rarely seen Attack Piece, Mirroring, and Everything’s Gonna Be Alright. Arabesque, a meditation on the recurring “power struggle between male and female” that Birnbaum recognizes in her work, is inspired by the composer Clara Schumann’s work, life, and relationship with her much more famous husband, the composer Robert Schumann. This struggle arguably connects the work to her otherwise dissimilar video work from 1975–76, in which Birnbaum confronted gender inequality in the media, pop culture, and even her relationships with her male collaborators.

Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Stein, 1935, gelatin-silver print. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s. CM3794 (photograph provided by the Contemporary Jewish Museum)

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories
Contemporary Jewish Museum
736 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
May 12–September 6, 2011

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is spearheading an exploration of Gertrude Stein’s colossal creative ambitions and the legacy of her involvement in the arts. The exhibition mingles personal and acquired artifacts among five “stories,” or subcategories, of her life. The first, “Picturing Gertrude,” documents the writer’s transformations in appearance and her interpersonal magnetism through portraits by Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, and other artists. “Domestic Stein” uncovers the intimate relationship between Stein and her life-long partner, Alice B. Toklas, while presenting details from their eccentric homes in Paris and the south of France. “The Art of Friendship” reveals Stein’s influence on a younger generation of queer artists and writers through her collaborations with dance and opera. “Celebrity Stein”concentrates on Stein’s lecture tour across the United States in 1934–35, documented extensively by the media, and also her experience during both World Wars. Last, “Legacies” spotlights the impact of her undisguised sexuality, brash experimentation, and charm on artists such as Andy Warhol and Glenn Ligon. The exhibition will travel to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, from October 14, 2011, to January 22, 2012. Check the website of the Contemporary Jewish Museum for a number of lectures, performances, and events pertaining to the exhibition.

Claude Cahun
Jeu de Paume
1 place de la Concorde, Paris, France
May 24–September 25, 2011

Claude Cahun, born Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob, was a vanguard French artist interested in bending the social perception of gender. Her androgynous photographic self-portraits from the 1920s not only fluctuated fluidly between male and female personae, they also presented innovative visual techniques like staging and montage. Although she was affiliated with the Surrealists in the 1930s, her theatrical emphasis on exposing predesigned assumptions about contemporary women inflamed their confrontations with reality. Despite this antagonism, Cahun’s photocollages and slew of writings—much of which is on display at Jeu de Paume—contributed to the momentum of the movement. Performance is inescapable in her photographs, which underscores her influence on photographers such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. This exhibition—the first large-scale presentation of her work in her native France in sixteen years—will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona during 2011–12.

Guerrilla Girls, Erase Discrimination, 1999, ink on rubber, 1⅛ x 2½ x ¼ in. each. Collection of the Akron Museum of Art (artwork © Guerrilla Girls; photograph provided by the National Museum of Women in the Arts)

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005
June 17–October 17, 2011

Since 1985 the legendary, gorilla-masked feminist collective the Guerrilla Girls have, in their own words, been “fighting discrimination with facts, humor, and fake fur.” The National Museum of Women in the Arts is celebrating more than twenty-five years of the group’s “guerrilla tactics” in fighting sexism and racism in the art world with the exhibition The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back. The show includes examples and documentation of the anonymous collective’s posters, stickers, billboards, books, and performances, which combine snarky satire with disturbing statistics to demonstrate the institutional exclusion of women and artists of color from both art history and contemporary art exhibitions.

Modern Women: Single Channel
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101
January 23–August 8, 2011

Alexandra Schwartz, curator of contemporary art at the Montclair Art Museum, gathered this group of single-channel videos by eleven female artists from the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Spanning from the 1960s to the late 1990s, the international selection offers the technical experiments of artists such as Pipilotti Rist and Kristin Lucas as well as conceptually groundbreaking precedents set by Joan Jonas and VALIE EXPORT. As a whole, the exhibition challenges the limitations of narrative, documentation, and popular culture. Although gender and sexuality are imminant concepts in the work, Modern Women: Single Channel emphasizes how the female gaze has evolved over the last forty years in the singular medium of video.

Ruth Gruber, Children playing chess aboard the Henry Gibbins, 1944 (artwork © Ruth Gruber; photograph provided by the International Center of Photography)

Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist
International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036
May 20–August 28, 2011

The Brooklyn-born Ruth Gruber is a famed photojournalist who began her career in the Soviet Arctic and Siberian Gulag in 1935. She continued to conquer unchartered territory in Alaska, capturing some of the first color images of the terrain and its natives in the early 1940s. Gruber activated her humanitarian inklings during World War II, documenting the migration of one thousand Jewish refugees to the United States from Europe in 1944 and later recording the difficulties of Jewish emigration into Palestine. The exhibition will include never-before-seen color photographs and vintage prints as well as contemporary prints from original negatives taken from Gruber’s personal archives.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

June 2011

“Women and the Arts: Dialogues in Female Creativity in the U.S. and Beyond”
June 15–17, 2011
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Centro de Saúde de Sete Rios, Lisbon, Portugal 1600-214

This three-day international gathering, organized by the American Studies Group of the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, will promote a reflection on women’s artistic production, contrasting the US context with other cultures. Featured sessions address such topics as “Dreaming, Doing, Being, & Seeing: The Woman Artist as Seen, Invisible, Witnessed and Observer”; “Women and the Crafts”; “Performance Arts”; “Art and Gender Politics”; “Portraits of the Artist as Woman”; “Women in Contemporary Art in the U.S. and Beyond”; and “Boundaries and Crossings in Theory and Art.”

!Women Art Revolution
Various locations across the United States

This eight-three-minute documentary film, directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson (and a CWA Pick in January 2011), relates the feminist art movement to the 1960s antiwar and civil rights causes and explains how historical events sparked feminist actions against major cultural institutions. Detailing major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, the film looks at early feminist art-education programs, political organizations and protests, and alternative art spaces such as A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Women’s Building in Los Angeles. Leeson also turns her attention to publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies and to landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the direction of contemporary art.

In June, the following theaters and cultural institutions will screen the film:

• June 1–8: IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10014
• June 2: Manhasset Cinemas, Gold Coast International Film Festival, 430 Plandome Road, Manhasset, NY 11030
• June 2–9: West End Cinema, 1 M Street NW, Washington, DC
• June 3: New Hyde Park Cinemas, Gold Coast International Film Festival, 3324 Hillside Avenue, New Hyde Park, NY 11040
• June 10: Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA 02210
• June 10: The Screen, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, 100 Saint Michaels Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87505
• June 14: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
• June 15–19: Museum of Fine Arts, 100 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02116
• June 17–23: Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
• June 17–23: Northwest Film Forum, 1515 Twelfth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122
• June 23–26: Noble Theater, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73102
• June 24–27: Northwest Film Center, 1119 Southwest Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
• June 24–30: Denver FilmCenter, Denver Film Society, 2601 Blake Street, Denver, CO 80205
• June 24–30: Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, CT 67401
• June 24–30: Salina Art Center, 150 South Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401

Talks by the director and guest speakers—such as Howardena Pindell and Carey Lovelace in New York, Carrie Brownstein in Portland—and other special events will accompany selected screenings.

Guerrilla Girls, Untitled, from the series Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985–1990, 1986, color photolithograph on paper, 17 x 22 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (artwork © Guerrilla Girls; photograph provided by the National Museum of Women in the Arts)

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back
June 17–October 2, 2011
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005

The Guerrilla Girls—anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists and appear in public wearing gorilla masks—use humor to expose sexism and racism in the art world, film, politics, and culture at large. This exhibition presents posters and ephemera from the group, including works from two portfolios, Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985–1990 and Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: Portfolio 2.

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want
May 18–August 29, 2011
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, England

The first major survey in London of Tracey Emin’s work occupies both floors and two outdoor sculpture terraces at the Southbank Centre. Works from every period of her career and in diverse media—painting, textiles, work on paper, photography, neon, film, and sculpture—will accompany a new series of outdoor sculptures made especially for the Hayward Gallery installation.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

May 2011

Poster for a Mahalia Jackson concert in Topeka, Kansas, 1962 (photograph provided by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)

Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44114
May 13, 2011–February 26, 2012

The eight sections of Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power will highlight how women have driven the engines of creation and change in popular music since the early twentieth century. Blues women from the 1920s such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith set the stage for those who followed: Brenda Lee, the Ronettes, Janis Joplin, Carol King, Donna Summer, Siouxsie Sioux, Madonna, Bikini Kill, Queen Latifah, and Lady Gaga. In addition to displays of artifacts and memorabilia, as well as videos and listening stations, the interactive exhibition will set up a recording booth where visitors can record a short story or moment of inspiration related to women in rock.

“From Portraits to Pinups: Women in Art and Popular Culture”
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 14, 2011

On Saturday, May 14, the Brooklyn Museum will hold a daylong symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Lorna Simpson: Gathered (a CWA Pick from February). Graduate students will present their research on topics such as the implications of women artists using images of women in their work, the connections between women’s history and contemporary art, and perceptions of race and gender. In addition, Wendy Steiner, an English professor and the founding director of the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak about concepts of beauty, while a panel discussion will feature the comedian Erica Watson, the drag king Shelly Mars, and the illustrator Molly Crabapple.

Uta Barth
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603
May 14–September 14, 2011

The photographer Uta Barth once intriguingly said that her contemplative images of domestic scenes devoid of action “are really not of anything in that sense, they register only that which is incidental and peripheral implied.” Curated by Elizabeth Siegel of the Art Institute of Chicago, this exhibition presents her latest series, called … and to draw a bright white line with light, alongside two earlier bodies of work: white blind (bright red) from 2002 and Sundial from 2007.

“Illustrated Lecture and Book Signing: Dr. Gail Levin”
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 15, 2011

On Sunday, May 15, the art historian Gail Levin, who teaches at Baruch College and the Graduate Center in New York, will discuss her most recent book, Lee Krasner: A Biography (New York: William Morrow, 2011), which looks beyond Krasner’s relationship with her husband Jackson Pollock to detail her own brilliant career as a painter in New York. A book signing will follow the 2:00 PM talk.

Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color
Women’s Museum
3800 Parry Avenue, Dallas, TX 75226
May 21–July 23, 2011

This traveling exhibition surveys Loïs Mailou Jones’s seventy-five years as a painter, tracing the development of her work from her early career into her signature mixture of African, Caribbean, American, and African American iconography, design, and thematic elements. Comprised of over sixty paintings, drawings, and textile designs from public and private collections, Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color also includes, for the first time, major holdings from the late artist’s estate for public presentation. A CWA Pick in October 2010, the exhibition originated at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.